Editor’s Note: All three golferswest.com writers, Bob Sherwin, Jim Street and Kirby Arnold, covered baseball for various newspapers long enough to earn the right to vote for Baseball’s Hall of Fame. This year is especially controversial with all the first-year players from the ‘steroids’ appearing on the ballot. The HOF announcement will be next Wednesday. Below is Jim Street’s perspective on his vote:

In all the years I have voted for the Hall of Fame — 30 and counting — this was the most difficult of ‘em all.

I mean, how do you not vote for Barry Bonds, the all-time Major League home-run leader? How do you not put a check in the box to the left of Roger Clemens’ name? And to a lesser extent, how about Sammy Sosa, who hit 60- something home runs more than anyone else in the game’s proud history? Or Mike Piazza, the God-son of Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda and one of the best catchers of all-time — if you believe in the numbers he accumulated during an impressive career behind and beside home plate.

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Hopefully this year really shows how far lost the process is and how the entire voting structure and who votes needs to be changed. We now have guys from GolfersWest voting because they covered baseball years ago for newspapers, we have TJ Quinn who admitted he hadn't covered baseball in 20 years. Just ridiculous. These guys had okay justification for who they voted for, but it was clear they didn't research real well.

Hopefully this year really shows how far lost the process is and how the entire voting structure and who votes needs to be changed.

Joe Sheehan said it well in today's newsletter:

Where [Leitch] lost me was in equating both sides of the debate. That's not fair, not even a little bit, because both sides of the debate are not behaving similarly. One one side you have people whose goal is to protect the standards of the Hall of Fame, to see each generation of players treated fairly and consistently, to hold the voters to some standard of reason, of logic, my god, of decency.

...See, the other side of the argument Will chides, the "establishment," by and large the people with votes, do things like this with their privilege. Protest votes. Blank ballots. Treating the Hall of Fame vote as little more than an opportunity to display their ignorance of baseball history, of the Hall's history, of statistics, of logic and reason and fairness. This is the year, I would say, that the Hall of Fame voting ceased to be about the players and became, wholly, about the writers.

...The side that didn't exist 20 years ago is standing up in opposition of the idea that any group of people could tell us, as fans, that Barry Bonds is anything less than a living legend. ... We're standing up for a Hall of Fame that, frankly, should be ashamed that it won't stand up for itself.

...The Hall of Fame will eventually have to join the fight, because Will's central point is right: these arguments, which are not about baseball, will turn people off from the Hall.

He then goes on to mention that the electorate needs to change, because the change in media landscape has left too many people voting who are unqualified while too many people left out of the process are qualified.

I'm more bothered by the yes votes for Morris than the no votes for Bonds and Clemens. I don't agree with such a strict interpretation of the integrity clause but I can understand the other side of that argument. The votes for Morris though just make no sense to me. I saw him pitch, I remember his career extremely well, he was good, very good, but he wasn't a Hall of Famer. If Lonnie Smith doesn't lose the ball in the roof and scores like he should have Morris doesn't even get a whiff of the Hall.

He then goes on to mention that the electorate needs to change, because the change in media landscape has left too many people voting who are unqualified while too many people left out of the process are qualified.

Didn't Bill James make this exact point in his Hall of Fame years ago? The change in the media landscape might have exacerbated it--almost certainly did, in fact--but I think this was always the case.

Kirby Arnold's ballot doesn't even bother me. Bonds and Clemens are going to be above 5%, but are not going in anyway. He voted for 10 guys, and he voted for the 2 best candidates (Bagwell, Piazza) that the steroid gossip crowd are leaving off. Well, he could have found a better candidate than Morris, but nobody is perfect.

Whatever happened to that story that there were a bunch of golfers who were using PEDs? Tiger seems to me like the Roger Clemens of golf - I could definitely see him embroiled in a long, bitter PED battle in the media/courts.

Whatever happened to that story that there were a bunch of golfers who were using PEDs? Tiger seems to me like the Roger Clemens of golf - I could definitely see him embroiled in a long, bitter PED battle in the media/courts.

Not that I think there is anything to it but it doesn't take a lot to make the anecdotal evidence work the way you want it too;

Dang, guess all of us should've applied to the BBWAA years ago too. I wrote about the university baseball team and was printed in the local paper back in 1989-1992 so who knows, maybe I would've qualified too given those loose standards.

The best way to clear it up is to require 10 years as a writer plus to have been an active member (ie: published columns about baseball) in the past 5 years (lets be generous). I bet that'd clear out a lot of the non-baseball people.

Guys, you're missing the beauty if these ballots. How can you not love people who cite Lee Smith's consecutive errorless game record as reason to vote for him- he was a reliever who had about 160 total chances in his career.

I also enjoyed BoB Sherwin's repeatedly contradicting himself, and Jim Sweet saying the Hall should be about the elite of the elite, and then he voted for Morris and Smith...

The best way to clear it up is to require 10 years as a writer plus to have been an active member (ie: published columns about baseball) in the past 5 years (lets be generous). I bet that'd clear out a lot of the non-baseball people.

Uggh...that is a horrible way to clean it up. Mind you I hate baseball writers nearly as much as I do lawyers, but you do not want to remove the old guard just because they don't have a current gig. These are the guys who covered the game while the players that they are voting on played, they do have a little bit of inside knowledge on the events of the time. Mind you, I agree that they need to remove the guys who may not be the best candidates, but I think that if you have a vote, and there is one player on the ballot who you covered live, you should continue to have the vote. Sure get rid of them once they don't have an active gig and aren't privy to inside information, but requiring them to be active in the past five years is a little ridiculous.

Mind you, I agree that they need to remove the guys who may not be the best candidates, but I think that if you have a vote, and there is one player on the ballot who you covered live, you should continue to have the vote.

They aren't voting on one player on the ballot, they are voting on all of them. i don't think it's unreasonable to say that they should have covered all of the players on the ballot live.

They aren't voting on one player on the ballot, they are voting on all of them. i don't think it's unreasonable to say that they should have covered all of the players on the ballot live.

This would require a lengthening of the 10-year minimum BBWAA membership qualification, in order to cover players on their 15th ballot (20 years after the player's retirement) and short-tenured players on their 1st ballot.

The best way to clear it up is to require 10 years as a writer plus to have been an active member (ie: published columns about baseball) in the past 5 years (lets be generous). I bet that'd clear out a lot of the non-baseball people.

It's really comical who has votes and who doesn't, and even more comical that the Hall of Fame doesn't seem to care. These guys aren't the only golf guys with votes. Bob Verdi works for the PGA Tour and before that the Chicago Black Hawks and Golf Digest. I'm sure he still has his ballot. I have no way of knowing, but I'll bet he votes for Morris.

I know of another golf writer on the west coast who hasn't covered baseball in more than 10 years who still has a BBWAA vote. He refused to vote for Bagwell last year, but at least he didn't vote for Morris.